Hand Tool Headlines
The Woodworking Blogs Aggregator
This "aggregator" collects all of the woodworking blogs I read every day - or try to anyway! Enjoy!
Headlines
If Only I Could Show You the Dovetails…
We live about and hour away from the self-proclaimed Furniture Capital of the World, High Point, NC. This claim is based partially on being what was the major furniture manufacturing center of North Carolina and partially on the twice-yearly furniture market (open to the trade), one of the largest around. Furniture making has moved away (some of it very far away) and Las Vegas is gunning for the furniture market. Yet they soldier on.
In the nearby town of Jamestown (metro High Point?) is the self-proclaimed largest furniture store. (Lots of self-proclamations in North Carolina.) At 1.3 million square feet, who am I to argue? My wife and I tend to view it as 1.3 million square feet of ugly furniture.
Ugly is a bit of a strong word. Not meeting our sense of aesthetics might be a more appropriate way to phrase it. There is some Shaker-esque furniture we almost like. What we have found is that for the money one can buy antiques or have something built by one of the area custom furniture makers. Let’s keep the money local.
There is one piece of furniture there that has continued to impress me (favorably) over the years. But like many things that impress, I have no desire to own it. I’m not sure where I’d put it.
Not your average chest on chest.
At 85′, it needs just the right room.
Easy to dust under, though.
And I think the hardware has been replaced. I don’t believe it’s original.
That’s the second largest claw and ball foot I’ve ever seen (with apologies to Buck Henry and Mel Brooks (extra credit if you get the reference)):
It’s bigger than it looks.
Can you imagine Mary May (or Chuck Bender) out there with a chainsaw carving this one.
Of course, the drawers are all dovetailed. I would love to show you but their JLG lift was unavailable.
You can read an article about it HERE.
Somewhere in High Point is the 42′, world’s largest (freestanding) dresser. When I find it, I’ll let you know.
New T-shirts, New Shipping, New World
This week we have made a lot of changes to how we make and ship the things we sell.
First: All books now ship via FedEx’s SmartPost service. SmartPost uses FedEx to move our books across the country, and a local USPS carrier to take it the last leg to your door. The service is reliable, the packages are tracked and you can expect delivery in 5-7 days from when your order ships. We switched to SmartPost because USPS’s Media Mail service collapsed last fall during the holiday shipping season.
Second: We now offer international shipping to many countries on books and apparel. To be honest, shipping books internationally is crazy-expensive. You will be better off buying our books from one of our international retailers. However, sending apparel across the globe is actually quite reasonable. And that’s because….
Third: We have changed how we make T-shirts and hats. Until now we made T-shirts and hats in large batches that sat in John’s office until you ordered one. We had to print about 100 to 200 shirts at a time, and we usually lost our own shirts on the deal.
We now use a fulfillment service in California to print and ship our U.S.-made shirts and U.S.-made hats worldwide. The shirts are the same (American Apparel), as are the hats (Bayside). The print quality is better than we were getting in Indiana. They are in a wider range of sizes – XS to 3XL. And the packaging is fantastic.
So now when you order a shirt or hat from a store, our fulfillment service prints the shirt or embroiders the hat and sends it to you, anywhere in the world.
We will soon be able to offer many of our old T-shirt designs (and additional new ones) very easily with this service. So you should soon be able to get the shirt you always wanted.
Incidentally, we make these shirts and hats for fun, not for profit. We make almost nothing on apparel. So on that note, I’m headed back to editing some books.
— Christopher Schwarz
Filed under: Products We Sell
Grinding Station
The Tormek BGM-100 kit is worth the money, it has everything you need except the ply:
How I Got Green Woodworking
Green woodworking. It's a term that's batted around quite a bit nowadays. Trouble is, what does it really mean?
Yes, in general the term refers to working wood while its still "green" or wet. But what I never had a clear idea on was the exact reason to work it wet. Maybe I'm thick. Or maybe the literature out there didn't give a clear reason why.
Back when I was cutting my teeth on serious woodworking, I'd read up on every aspect of the craft. Langsner, Alexander, Dunbar, among others. But none of it stuck with me, so I ventured down the road paved with kiln-dried planks and started building stuff. But what about chairs? They were a sort of mystery in my early days. Sure, I could use my skills to build them with kiln dried woods and furniture joints, but as I got more interested in making them, I discovered Galbert and couldn't get images of his work out of my head. Can't make those with planks of wood from the lumberyard. Or could I? When I bought two stick chairs from Chris Schwarz and asked how he got the stock, his answer sort of shocked me. "It's just regular lumber." I knew he'd studied with professional chair makers, so his answer carried some weight.
I decided it was time to take decisive action, decidedly. A week-long, intensive class with Galbert cemented the principles in my mind, and it's affected my woodworking much like the first instrument I built. My woodwork will never be the same.
Here's why you work green wood. It's easy. That's it. There's nothing more to it than that. There's no magic in the moisture. There's no mojo in the medullary. If there's a single reason to build stuff out of green wood is that you can, with a tiny, cheap tool kit, get furniture parts from a tree. And not rustic furniture parts either, but the best furniture parts. You are your own sawmill.
And if you think you have to split green wood because it gets you strong parts, well, that's mostly true, but it's also not entirely accurate. One thing I learned from luthiery is how soundboards are produced. Chair parts need to be strong. But you know what else needs to be incredibly strong? The soundboard on an oud or lute. See, on a typical oud (or again, most any lute) the soundboard is made of spruce that is only about 1/16"-3/32" thick. This isn't oak mind you, its a soft wood. To the soundboard is glued the bridge, to which is tied 11 strings, which when brought to pitch exert over 100 pounds of constant, unrelenting, levering tension through the bridge and the glue-only joint (no pins, tenons, or joinery of any sort) to the soundboard. And if that soundboard has any grain runout, if the grain lines don't flow virtually uninterrupted from the bottom of the sound box to the neck, it will fail. The bridge will find the exiting tubes of lignin and rip a hole in the face in a violent, explosive instant. Bam! And the crowd goes wild. So how are soundboards produced? By sawing. The spruce logs are first split, then each soundboard is sawn from the split face to keep runout to an absolute minimum. The same principle can apply to harvesting chair parts from straight, sawn boards.
Here's the other thing I learned about chair joints from Galbert that took away all of my past frustration. There is no such thing as a dry piece going into a wet piece. This always threw me for a loop. How do you stage parts? How do you keep them "wet?" Do you have to make a chair in a certain amount of time? Do you have to build a whole dining room full of chairs in a week before the legs dry out? The answer is no, because no matter what you do in your shop, a nearly finished chair part can sit in storage for years and still become part of a perfect chair joint. And that's because you're joining a dry part to a super-dry part. And the beauty of all this is, you control when the super-dry part becomes super-dry. It's all in your control. I think of my drying kiln as a shrinking machine. It makes stuff smaller, then it gets bigger when I remove it from the kiln (but not immediately.) That lets me make tenons that can't, under any circumstances, shrink and become loose, unless I put the entire finished chair back in the kiln. I shape the tenon when its in its shrunken state. After it hits glue and lives in the non-kiln environment, it gets bigger. Forever. For me, this was the key that unlocked the understanding of how green woodworking relates to how chairs are joined. Theoretically, you could process enough chair parts for the rest of your life while they are green (again for ease of work) then store them in your shop and build chairs with them at your leisure. When I figured this out, I realized that one could use dry wood, even well-sawn straight-grain lumber and extract chair parts successfully from the planks. Remember Schwarz: "it's just regular lumber." Of course there is a bit more to it than that, but at its core, this is it.
This info was transmitted to me by Pete during our class. But you don't have to take a class with Pete (although I highly recommend it) to get access to his savant-like knowledge of this craft. His new work, Chairmaker's Notebook published by Lost Art Press is now available. I've been reading the PDF for a couple weeks now, and have come to a conclusion. This book isn't about chair making. It's woodworking Kung Fu.
Even if you don't plan to make a chair, this is the #1 book on how a tree is put together, and how best to take it apart.
Parquetry Tutorial – Trimming and Banding
I am earnestly trying to wrap up some frayed threads in the blog posts, and this one and two more will complete the tutorial on simple parquetry, which I will combine, edit, and post as a downloadable document.
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Once the parquetry composition has been assembled such that the area completed is larger than the field of the composition as it will be presented on the panel, the time has come to trim it to the exact size you want. But before that, you have to decide exactly how large you want the central field of the parquetry panel. I tend to work my way in from the edges of the panel as determined by the sizes and proportions of the furniture on which it will reside, then subtract a symmetrical border and a symmetrical banding.
Once I have done that, I simply re-establish the center lines of the parquetry assemblage and precisely mark out its perimeter, and saw it with any of the veneer saws mentioned earlier. The desired end result is a rectangular and symmetrical composition. Once I have the field trimmed to the proper size, I re-mount the unit on a second, larger sheet of kraft paper using hot glue. It need be adhered only at the perimeter.
I tend to make my own banding, frequently making a simple stack of veneer faces with slightly thicker centers, assembled and glued between two cauls until they are set. Then I just rip of as many pieces of banding as the assembled block can yield.
Once the banding is available, I cut them then trim the ends with a plane and miter shooting jig. Once the first piece is ready to apply, I place the entire composition on a large board with a corked surface. Then just like Roubo, I glue the banding down on top of this second piece of kraft paper, tight against the cut edge of the field, and “clamp” it in place with push pins, similar to those illustrated by Roubo. By the time I get all the way around the perimeter of the field, cutting then trimming each of the banding pieces, the piece is ready to set aside for a bit.
For the outer border, I tend to use a simple approach, often employing some of the original veneer stock in either the long-grain or cross grain orientation.
Once the banding is set I remove the pins then hammer veneer the borders in place, and the assembling of the parquetry panel is complete.
Up next – Gluing Down the Parquetry
My Tool Collection, Part 1: Collecting vs. Hoarding
Back bevel or higher pitch – which is better?
Most of you know that I am not a big fan of honing back bevels on plane irons. I believe that many inexperienced plane users allow themselves to be mislead, thinking that a back angle (bevel) is going to be some type of magic pill. But after a crafts person is sufficiently confident in their ability to sharpen and maintain appropriate cutting geometry, the use of a back bevel can be very beneficial.
Several days ago I was working in my friend, Les’, shop. He asked me if I’d take a look at his L-N #4 that he had set up with a York pitch (50°) frog. He wasn’t very happy with the surface he was getting on a piece of cherry stock. The stock was not particularly gnarly, but there was a grain direction change, right in the middle. The iron was the same that had been removed from the Common pitch (45°) frog. Les, who is always meticulous about the condition of edge tools, said that he believed the iron was sharp. But I, “doubting Thomas” that I am, suggested that we test the edge. Sure enough, the iron sliced a piece of unsupported paper easily. Next, it trimmed a neat bare patch on the back of my forearm. But upon closer inspection under a loop, it was clear that there were some tiny edge fractures present.
Cogitation began. Increasing the pitch angle of a bench plane (bevel down), supposedly increases the tool’s ability to work in very dense and/or highly figured stock. Obviously, either condition is a challenge to shearing tools. And an increase in pitch causes an increase in the amount of effort required to push the shearing edge through the material. Neither of us had ever experienced a similar problem when using an iron that was back beveled to effectively create a higher pitch. Could back beveling be better than increasing pitch? Turns out, yes. Maybe.
Take a look at the following diagrams (Please note that, for the purpose of illustrating the problem, I’ve used Common Pitch (45°) and Middle Pitch (55°) for the examples.)
When a back bevel in employed, the increased included angle strengthens the tip of the iron. The clearance (relief) angle is kept to a minimum, thereby providing the greatest possible amount of support to the iron.
When a conventionally prepared iron (25° primary bevel, 30° secondary bevel) is secured to a higher pitch bed (frog), the clearance angle significantly increases and the amount of unsupported surface significantly decreases. I believe that the tip section would be effectively weakened by these two factors.
It may be appropriate to increase both primary and secondary bevel angles in order to increase tip section strength and reduce clearance thereby increasing the amount of support surface. It is common for adjustable scraper planes (Stanley 12, 112, 212) to be ground at 45°. But these tools are rarely used at attack angles under 90°. We need to do some physical testing, as there seems to be very little, if any, information available on the matter. If anyone has any thoughts and/or experiences on this question, please share them with us.
And the Prize Goes To …
As February winds down, it’s still possible to see the occasional remnant of the holidays hanging around. A porch here and there still lit up by a strand of lights, a wreath on a door or fence (OK, maybe that’s just my house) and a woodworking magazine’s lagging announcement of a winner of a contest launched in December. In December, I announced a contest seeking contributions to our “End Grain” column – short articles that […]
The post And the Prize Goes To … appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.
I will not be intimidated...much
Now the box is 9-3/4" deep X 22-3/4" tall and 24-3/4" wide. It's a similar dimension to a box that I used for years, just a bit taller.
The hardest part so far is not actually cutting dovetails for the first time in 15 years. It's the two North Bennet Street toolboxes in the shop mocking me while I cut my joints.
Good old Henry Ford
Still awfully cold here in NW Ohio. But the sun is shining. It’s a good day to sit around and think.
For some reason I started thinking about Henry Ford. Farm boy with Irish roots. Pioneer industrialist. Builder of some of the largest manufacturing complexes ever conceived. Inventor, philanthropist, the list goes on and on.
But the thing I remember most about Henry Ford is that he paid his workers more than his competitors paid theirs, more than just “a living wage”. Henry Ford was, above all else, a “long term” thinker. He realized that well paid workers could be a huge, hitherto untapped, customer base. Get a job at Ford Motor Company. Buy a Model T. A new middle class was born and America was “off to the races.”
Sometimes I wonder if anyone in American business or government still thinks that way?
New YouTube Videos.
Who knows what’s being held?!
We have a quick announcement today. We’ve been working on this new idea for a while but didn’t want to mention too much on the blog before now as we’ve had an unpredictable last year which has made us conscious of false promises. We know now that things are ready to go, we have the first video all filmed along with the second and the third so we thought it time to give you a heads up. I’m calling these YouTube videos but of course they’ll also be posted on here, we’re considering them more as a video blog rather than project videos and each will delve in to a kind of pub rant on woodworking, hand tools or a technique; whatever’s on the mind at the time. We anticipate a gradual evolution of the format so will be very welcome of your feedback and ideas.
We will touch on the odd small project from time to time along with demonstrations, but for the most part these are chats. Blog posts which are spoken rather than written. After a long time off from creating any YouTube uploads we’ve had time to reflect and figure out what we should do next. Our previous project videos were time consuming to make and so unrealistic to bring them out consistently so we’ve planned for this new content to become possible as a weekly event.
The idea behind the video blogs is expression. Don’t be expecting the Queen’s English, but a conversation can come with far more clarity when sharing an opinion. The written word can be detailed and specific, but if read in the wrong tone the interpretation can be off.
There’s going to be a large focus on discussion and comments. We get a great input on our blog posts in this regard and always enjoy reading every one of them. We don’t like to interrupt the discussion with many ‘thanks for your comment’ comments, and more often we have so much to say in response it seems we would be writing something longer than the post itself. We find these videos to be a great solution to responding to comments in an in depth discussion which will more often than not go off an a tangent and inspire further thoughts.
The first video will be uploaded next week. Please let us know your thoughts and suggestions. One that we’re hoping to incorporate down the line is weekly diary, with footage from our working week. In depth project videos are also being produced which will become available for sale, but that’s a different matter which will be detailed further down the line. And as a final note… we are planning to finish Part Three of The Wall Cupboard.
Making a Small Box This AM
Anyway if you pick your woods, in this case Maple and Spanish Cedar, you can hide a lot of rust. I've some Walnut already trued that will make the top and bottom. Still, bottom line it's going to be a "second" and will end up in the gift pile.
The box in progress:
I'll start rough dimensioning the bath vanity this afternoon, that and shop maintenance should take care of today. One of the shop maintenance items will be setting up the new CBN wheel with a Tormek tool rest/chisel-plane iron jig.
I like the Tormek for the precision and cool cutting but it is, as is well known, slow. The CBN wheel works reasonably cool and is much faster. While I keep the Shaptons available I'm always trying to get away from water. BTW, I still love me some oil stones but they are slow, will not work well with all my chisels, and need a strop to finish.
The CBN wheel and Spyderco stone, which will cut any tool iron, will allow me to eliminate water for 90/95% of my sharpening and requires no more stone maintenance than oil stones.
That's the plan.
The press is done, now what?
I cleaned up the press pieces after the glue up, and slathered them with a mix of linseed oil, mineral spirits and poly. I just wanted to bring out the color in the wood a little, and add some tiny bit of protection.
This morning before work I installed the screw jacks. Not much to report on that — I had to file a couple of notches into the hole for the ribs on the metal bosses, drive them in and run a couple of screws in to secure them. I guess I need to do some marquetry now, I’m rapidly running out of tool-based excuses. I’m so screwed…(pun intended)
File notches for the alignment ribs in the screw jack bosses
Drive in the boss and secure it with a couple of screws
Finished press, ready to go to work.
Spring Fever Sale at Shop Woodworking
Two days of savings Feb. 27 & 28
As I’m sitting here staring out the window in my office all I can think about is “how soon will Spring get here?” Don’t get me wrong, I’m one of those weirdos that loves Winter, but Spring is nice too!
The folks over at Shop Woodworking must be thinking the same thing. For two days, starting today February 27 and running through Saturday February 28 you can save 40% on videos, eBooks and digital downloads in their massive collection.
What this really means is that rather than trudging through the snow to go to your local bookstore, or woodworking retailer, you can instead purchase the downloadable item of your choice and get right into the shop (or warm comfy chair) and start learning something new for your next project.
I just picked up an eBook copy of “Simply Built Cabinets” by Danny Proulx.
This is a small hint for an upcoming project in the spring, but given the drop in temperature forcasted for my neck of the woods, I’ll be comfy and warm while I learn a thing or two AND have saved a dollar or two at the same time.
Hurry, this sale ends February 28, 2015!
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Plane & Spokeshave Details
Number 5 Sized Planes
Today’s Article – Shaker Sewing Table
Pennsylvania Spice Cabinet
WORK No. 154 - Published February 27, 1892
ARTICLES FOUND IN THIS ISSUE:
SMALL MODEL ELECTRO-MOTOR: SIMPLE AND EASY TO MAKE
•
WIRE-WORK IN ALL ITS BRANCHES
•
MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD HOUSE
•
COPYRIGHT IN SCULPTURE
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AN ANTIQUE DUTCH CHAIR
•
AN EASILY-MADE CHEST OF DRAWERS
•
STAGE CARPENTRY
•
SHORT LESSONS IN WOOD-WORKING FOR AMATEURS
•
OUR GUIDE TO GOOD THINGS
•
SHOP
Disclaimer: Articles in Work describe materials and methods that would not be considered safe or advisable today. We are not responsible for the content of these magazines, and cannot take any responsibility for anyone attempting projects or procedures described therein.
The first issue of Work was published on March 23rd, 1889. The goal of this project is to release digital copies of the individual issues starting on the same date in 2012, effectively republishing the materials 123 years to the day from their original release.
The original printing was on thin, inexpensive paper. There are many cases of uneven inking and bleed-through from the page behind. Our copies of Work come from bound library volumes of these issues and are subject to unfavorable trimming, missing covers, etc. To minimize harm to these fragile volumes, we've undertaken the task of scanning the books ourselves. We do considerable post processing of the scans to make them clear but please bear with us if a margin is clipped too close, or a few words are unreadable. We would like to thank James Vasile and Karl Fogel for their help in supplying us with a book scanner and generally enabling this project to get off the ground.
You are welcome to download, print, and pretty much do what you want with the scan for your own personal purposes. Feel free to post a link or a copy on your blog or website. All we ask is a link back to the original project and this blog. We are not answering requests for commercial downloads or reprinting at this time.
• Click to Download Vol.3 - No. 154 •
540 Madison’s Dresser Pt 4 “Drawer Frames”
We’re making progress with the 8 drawer tall dresser I’m building for my daughter Madison. In today’s episode we’re moving on to building the drawer frames for the dresser.
Drawer frames are a crucial component in the overall body of the dresser, and while most probably won’t notice them in their entirety (other than the edge of the front facing rail) it’s still important to make sure they’re well constructed.
There are a number of joinery options to choose from, including non-traditional joinery such as pocket-holes (which is actually what I was originally planning to use.) But the joinery I decided to use in this build was a traditional tongue and groove joint.
To insure the mating pieces match up as perfect as possible, I opted to use a tongue and groove router bit set I featured several years ago in an episode of “Router Bit of the Month.”
Also featured in this episode is the glue-up process for assembling the drawer frames and a quick discussion of cleaning up the dados from the last episode (something I didn’t plan to do, but it turns out they needed a little assistance.)
A full set of detailed plans are available for sale on my website, thanks to Brian Benham of Benham Design Concepts.
You can find them by visiting our new “Digital Downloads Store” by clicking here.
Episode available for download in the following formats:
|SD Video||720HD Video||Audio only|
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